Robby Vachon went 6-2 as coach of the Cony football team against Gardiner in the state’s oldest rivalry. He coached the Rams to the biggest rout. Back-to-back shutouts. Oversaw some of the series’s best individual efforts.
And rarely, if ever, felt a chance to relax.
“You never felt comfortable,” he said. “Every play seemed like such a big play. It’s always very well attended, you’ve got good crowds. You just never know what’s going to happen.”
The winner of the annual Cony-Gardiner football game gets to keep the trophy boots for a year. Kennebec Journal file photo by Joe Phelan
Vachon was one of the key figures in the last decade of the 127-year-old rivalry, but he had plenty of company. Coaches like B.L. Lippert for the Rams and Matt Burgess and Joe White for Gardiner. Players like Ben Lucas, Alonzo Connor, Reid Shostak and Collin Foye. Performances like Brandon St. Michel scoring four touchdowns in a 2012 Cony win, or Jordan Roddy’s 172 receiving yards and clinching touchdown in pouring rain in Cony’s 2016 win.
And more. Lots more.
“I think it’s one of the biggest things in the Augusta-Gardiner community,” former Cony quarterback Taylor Heath said. “And playing in it, there’s nothing else like it. Everything about it is unique and special, and that’s one of the things I miss the most.”
There were plenty of storylines worth noting as the decade comes to a close. Here were a few that stood out:
2011: Connor’s big day leads Gardiner to dramatic 36-34 win
In 2011, Cony had a promising sophomore quarterback in Ben Lucas, on his way to rewriting the state passing record book.
But Gardiner had Alonzo Connor, a fearsome mix of size and speed, and one of the best running backs central Maine has seen.
Cony’s passing offense, led by Lucas (17-for-29, 273 yards, three touchdowns) and Chandler Shostak (11 catches, 188 yards, two touchdowns) was clicking, but Gardiner kept up on the ground. The Rams had no answer for Connor, who ran for 241 yards and three scores.
“It was a battle to the end,” Connor said. “It was a score-for-score battle. They’d score, and we didn’t hold our heads down. We just continued to fight.
“Our line did a tremendous job for me. Made me look good at times when maybe I shouldn’t have looked good.”
Four Cony turnovers led to 21 Gardiner points, and the teams went to overtime tied at 28. Gardiner got the ball first, and on the first play Connor dashed up the middle for a 10-yard score. He added the 2-point conversion to put Gardiner ahead 36-28.
“It was probably along the lines of a 37 Trap,” Connor, who ran for 161 second-half yards, said of the winning score. “Bring it up the hole through our two best lead tackles, Eddie Donnell and John Kelley.”
Cony answered with Lucas hitting Shostak for a touchdown, but Lucas’s attempt to sneak in for the conversion fell short, by inches.
“To come up short like that, it was a tough pill to swallow,” Lucas said. “I’ve spent a lot of time, even now to this day still, reflecting on that game.”
2013: Lucas, Cony erupt for emphatic 76-14 win
Lucas and the Rams got their payback with a 26-15 win in 2012. But in 2013, there was a different motivation at hand.
Cony had lost the previous week to Greely 35-21. And the Rams were angry.
“They were fired up for that game, coming off a loss against a team we thought we should have beaten,” Vachon said. “They took the loss pretty hard. Those kids had no need for motivation.”
An 0-7 Gardiner team had the misfortune of being the next team up for the eventual state champions. It was a slaughter; Cony was up 20-0 after the first quarter and 56-0 at the half, and even with starters out for the second half set a rivalry record for points in a game.
“I wish we reached 100,” Lucas said. “We wanted to set the tone. We didn’t want them to have any life at all.”
On his way to the Fitzpatrick Trophy, Lucas was terrific. He went 14-of-18 for 223 yards and six touchdowns in the one half of play.
“He looked like he was a junior in college,” Vachon said. “He was a man amongst boys, it looked like, out there. He was just so dialed in that night, and (Lippert) was calling some great plays.”
It was Lucas’s final Cony-Gardiner game. He did not want to leave with a losing record.
“It’s your rival. This is how those games go,” Lucas said. “They want to beat you as bad as they can, and you want to beat them as bad as you can. So we didn’t want to let the foot off the gas pedal at all.”
2015: Shostak goes off as Cony wins 40-0
En route to its second straight shutout victory, Cony outgained Gardiner 515-172 in 2015, and got big performances from Taylor Heath, who passed for two touchdowns, and Anthony Brunelle, who caught eight balls for 145 yards and a touchdown.
But the most dominant effort came from Reid Shostak, who set a career high with 252 yards on 26 carries while also running for three touchdowns.
Shostak thanked his line after the game. Four years later, nothing much had changed.
“My linemen were playing really well that night,” he said. “I was fortunate enough to run behind Nic Caron, Elijah Tobey, Devon O’Connor, just to name a few. … It was a good cherry on top to the career.”
As Shostak piled up the yards, a chant of “You can’t stop him!” broke out among the Cony fans. When the holes weren’t paved for him, Shostak was able to make his own yards, slipping out of tackle after tackle in the backfield.
“It was the last Cony-Gardiner game I was ever going to play,” Shostak said. “It meant a little more.”
2016: Cony wins 27-18 in the rain in do-or-die finale
The rivalry returned to being a regular-season contest in 2013, but it wasn’t until 2016 that the teams met with everything on the line.
Both the Rams and Tigers were 2-5 coming in, and the winner would clinch a spot in the Pine Tree Conference Class B playoffs. The loser would miss the postseason entirely.
Gardiner running back Alonzo Connor, right, storms past a diving Waterville defensive back during a 2011 game at Hoch Field in Gardiner. Kennebec Journal file photo by Joe Phelan
And then, to add to the drama, the skies opened up.
“It was definitely a typhoon,” said Heath, then a senior. “We kind of expected it to be a mud bowl, but we didn’t expect high winds and torrential downpours.”
Cony took a 21-6 lead but Gardiner kept battling, whittling the lead to 21-18 with 10:16 to go in the third. On the Cony sideline, Heath knew the Rams needed an answer.
“Everything was going against us. They had the momentum,” he said. “Everything was looking down. … But B.L. kept us in the game, kept our heads in the game.”
With 3:45 left in the third, Cony made the play it needed to make. Heath dropped back on playaction and slung a pass down the middle, where Jordan Roddy was separating from his defenders.
The throw was perfect. Heath hit Roddy in stride, and the junior raced the rest of the way for a 73-yard touchdown to put Cony ahead by the final margin.
“I just heaved it. I really didn’t know where Jordan was,” said Heath, who went 21-for-33 for 361 yards and three touchdowns. “Jordan and I kind of had that connection all season. If he was running a flag route but he had a fade instead, I would just know he’d run the fade. … I think he stretched that post out to a thin post, and in triple coverage, I think it just barely went over all three of them.”
The score gave Cony needed breathing room the rest of the way.
“Before that play, my hands were shaking,” Heath said. “I think everyone else’s were, too.”
2017: Foye’s touchdown gives Gardiner a 13-7 overtime win
Gardiner’s top player from that muddy defeat, Collin Foye, had another Cony-Gardiner game left. And the next fall, he finished his career by bringing the boot back to Gardiner, running for 99 yards and the winning score as the Tigers won in overtime.
“It had been tough the past few years. They’d gotten the best of us,” said Foye, who ran for 157 yards the year before. “Everything came together. The stars aligned.”
Cony came in 5-2, but 2-5 Gardiner’s hard-nosed defense gave the Rams all they could handle. The Tigers had a chance to win it in regulation, but fumbled the ball at the Cony 29-yard line in the last minute. The Rams then had a shot, but missed a 27-yard field goal in the closing seconds.
That set up overtime, where Matt Boynton’s interception gave Gardiner a chance to walk off with the win. The Tigers needed one play. Foye, who rushed for 77 yards after halftime, found space to the right and ran the ball in from 10 yards out to spark a massive celebration on front of the Hoch Field crowd.
“When I got the chance my senior year, I was like ‘No, I want this moment.’ And my team gave me the perfect opportunity,” Foye said. “When I got in the end zone I threw my helmet off, I knew it was over. Didn’t even look for a flag.”
In tears after the game, Foye was named the game’s MVP. His team chanted his name during the presentation.
Cony quarterback Ben Lucas throws a pass against Gardner during the 2012 rivalry game in Gardiner. Kennebec Journal photo by Joe Phelan
“I blacked out for a little bit,” he said. “I remember the team swarming me and my helmet’s off and I’m getting tackled and I can’t breathe under the pile. I didn’t care. I was like, ‘This is awesome.'”
Just another memorable image in a rivalry full of them. Tonight, another chapter will be written.
“You can become a Cony legend or a Gardiner legend based on a big play, a big performance,” Lippert said. “You can become a legend instantaneously in this rivalry by making a play or having a big night. That’s something that motivates kids.”
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